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The Cosmetic Dupe
| Article
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12523 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1987 |
2,090 Words |
| Author
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Leil Lowndes
Leil Lowndes is a free-lance writer and model agency owner
living in New York. |
Every year, women - and increasing numbers of men - spend billions of dollars on cosmetic preparations. A woman thinks nothing of paying $15 for a jar of face cream, $8 for a lipstick, and $11.95 for a pressed eye shadow. (In some circles, increase those numbers to $65 for face cream, $14 for lipstick, and $1.95 for eye shadow.)
Are the more expensive products more effective than the cheaper drug store versions?
"Definitely not!" say dermatologists.
Dr. James H. Sternberg at the University of California in Los Angeles echoes the sentiment of most dermatologists. "Just because one soap, lotion, or cosmetic is more expensive than another doesn't mean it's better." In fact, a 99-cent jar of petroleum jelly is the best moisturizer for skin, but, he tells us, "nobody likes the texture."
How does one explain this unquestioning acceptance of inflated cosmetic prices? A marketing consultant, Allan J. Mottus, explains part of the phenomenon by describing "a whole new group of female consumers such as those who are just out of law school. They don't know how they should look, so they think they can buy their way out of the confusion." They fall prey to the product image created by television, newspaper, and magazine advertisements, and they follow the advice of the cosmetician in the local department store who is trying to sell her line of products. They are victims of a gross misassumption that you get what you pay for.
Market researches have discovered that the majority of the consumers of higher priced cosmetics are affluent women in their thirties - housewives and professional women - trying to regain that youthful look. There are 76 million baby boomers in America - more consumers aged thirty-five to forty than ever before in our history. And they were all brought up ona youth culture that reinforces the American prejudice that "young is best." Nowhere is this more evident than in the haute couture fashion magazines. Although they cater to affluent women over forty, models in these publications are seldom over the age of twenty-five.
The cosmetic industry has made the correct assumption that consumers will pay ten times the reasonable cost of a product, lured by the promise of regaining youthful looks. Studies show that raising the price of a product has increased its sales without changing content or
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